


And So, From the Bottom of my Heart

by deplore



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Ableist Language, M/M, Polyamory, mild nijihimu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 03:29:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1590047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deplore/pseuds/deplore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for 2014/5/9 (AkaMayuNiji day).<br/><b>Warning</b>: for mild ableism, mild street harassment.</p><blockquote>
  <p>Mayuzumi's gameplan for the day: he will sluggishly move through his classes for the day before hauling off to the store that sells the tofu brand that Akashi particularly likes before heading back to the apartment he shares with Nijimura. Most likely, Akashi will already have made himself right at home by then, and so there will be a strange harmonic chord in the “welcome home” he hears in response to his “I’m back”. <i>Right, this is home</i>, Mayuzumi will remember, and he will feel okay with that fact.</p>
  <p>Life could probably be worse, but Mayuzumi doesn’t want to test that.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	And So, From the Bottom of my Heart

**Author's Note:**

> An important thing to keep in mind going into this fic: Akashi has already reverted to his "original" personality and therapists suddenly exist in the KnB universe.

1.

Akashi’s the one who introduces them. Ever the diligent underclassman, when Akashi catches wind that Nijimura needs a place to stay in or near Tokyo, he very kindly arranges for Nijimura to meet up with Mayuzumi. “He’s doing his second year in university,” Akashi explains when they meet up for coffee to hammer out the details. “I went to high school with him. I wouldn’t say he’s the reliable type, but I think you two would get along fine.”

“I’d settle for anybody who pays the rent on time and isn’t secretly selling drugs out of the bathroom,” Nijimura replies, maybe a little too honestly.

“Well, I think he’ll fit the bill just fine, then,” Akashi says, and smiles. Sometime before Nijimura finishes his mocha latte, it occurs to Nijimura that Akashi grew up pretty easy on the eyes. A few hours later, Nijimura also realizes that Akashi grew up very skilled in the bedroom.

 

 

 

2.

Nijimura had a spiritual awakening as to the level of his homosexuality when he was a teenager in Los Angeles. The level, he discovered, is critically high. He kind of still blames Tatsuya for this even after all the years, and even told him as much once when Nijimura was drunk and doing regrettable things, but Tatsuya had just laughed it off. “There are worse awakenings to have in Los Angeles,” Tatsuya had said, and carefully dropped Nijimura onto his living room sofa, smiling slightly.

“You are,” Nijimura slurred in return, “taking this really well.”

“Well, yeah,” Tatsuya replied, and shrugged. “I get the ‘you were my first gay crush’ thing pretty often, actually. It’s flattering, really.”

“You’re not my gay crush anymore, just… so you know,” Nijimura said.

Tatsuya’s smile wasn’t mocking, it was gentle; later, Nijimura remembers drunkenly appreciating how understanding Tatsuya was of the whole stupid thing. “Yeah, I get that one a lot too,” Tatsuya replied. “Lie down on your side so you don’t choke to death on your vomit if you throw up, alright? I don’t want to wake up here tomorrow morning to find your dead body on the sofa. I’m putting a wastebasket here, just… aim as best as you can.”

Nijimura had lived to see the morning. A few months later, he had a physical awakening to the level of his homosexuality when he moved in with Mayuzumi.

 

 

 

3.

Mayuzumi takes the train into the city for his morning classes, holding one of the supports near the door. He’d just finished his latest novel the night before, so he doesn’t have anything to read – instead he eyes his fellow commuters and wonders vaguely how scripted those train-groping porn videos are. Do they hire out an entire car and pay people to pretend like they don’t notice some poor girl get felt up? Worse, do actual train gropings get taped? Mayuzumi vows to not Google it, because he doesn’t need to lose more faith in humanity. He watches a teenage girl push her hair back out of her eyes as she hunches over her cell phone and decides he’s very glad that he doesn’t have to worry about those kinds of things happening to him for real.

His own cell phone buzzes in his right pants pocket. Mayuzumi pulls it out and unlocks the screen to pull up a Line chat:

> **Nijimura** : Buy silken tofu on your way back?  
>  **Mayuzumi** : That means Akashi’s coming over  
>  **Mayuzumi** : Soooooo  
>  **Mayuzumi** : Nah, fuck that. He can bring his own tofu. Isn’t he, like, rich?  
>  **Nijimura** : Can I not just want to eat tofu?  
>  **Nijimura** : shit. That was too transparent, wasn’t it.  
>  **Nijimura** : Yeah, Akashi called, he’s staying over a few days.  
>  **Mayuzumi** : …  
>  **Mayuzumi** : Silken tofu, got it.

Mayuzumi tucks his cell phone into his pocket again, but when he looks up, the girl he’d been looking at before is still poring over hers. She has medium-length hair that’s a chocolate brown, and Mayuzumi can see fake eyelashes through her fringe; she looks young, but she’s not wearing a school uniform, so they’re probably around the same age. In a parallel timeline or an alternate universe, maybe something strange and fantastic could happen on this train ride into the city and they could bond, and next week she could be intensely focused on her cell phone because Mayuzumi’s the one texting her.

In this universe, though, Mayuzumi walks right past her as he gets off at the usual stop and she doesn’t look up. He will sluggishly move through his classes for the day before hauling off to the store that sells the tofu brand that Akashi particularly likes before heading back to the apartment he shares with Nijimura. Most likely, Akashi will already have made himself right at home by then, and so there will be a strange harmonic chord in the “welcome home” he hears in response to his “I’m back”. _Right, this is home_ , Mayuzumi will remember, and he will feel okay with that fact.

Life could probably be worse, but Mayuzumi doesn’t want to test that.

 

 

 

 

4.

“You’re a bad habit,” Mayuzumi says. “I should quit. Do they make something like nicotine patches for this kind of situation?”

Akashi rolls over in bed, rolls into Mayuzumi’s chest. “You and I both desire strange things, that’s all,” Akashi replies.

Mayuzumi likes light novels best, but he’s read some postmodern literature in his time, too. As far as he can tell, all that a written work needs to ascend from light novel to postmodern is a stubborn atmospheric feeling of vagueness and a heroine who’s a girl on pills of questionable efficacy to fix chronic chemical imbalances in the brain, personality quixotic and just a little dangerous – thrill seekers, unconventional thinkers. Mayuzumi wanted a light novel heroine; he got Akashi instead.

“We’re both into Nijimura,” Mayuzumi says, mostly to console himself.

Akashi laughs. “An exception to the rule, then,” he cedes willingly, and it’s these little changes for the better that keeps Mayuzumi coming back.

 

 

 

5.

It takes a few months before Mayuzumi and Nijimura are comfortable with talking about it, but they eventually do talk about it, because all three of them are sleeping with each other in all possible permutations and things need to be laid out sooner or later. “Akashi and I kinda had a thing in high school,” Mayuzumi says impassively, staring at the television, gaze unwavering. There’s a nature documentary on about rare snakes in China showing.

“A thing,” Nijimura echoes.

“It was really no big deal,” Mayuzumi replies, more as if he’s talking to the air than to Nijimura. All Nijimura has to do is wait and Mayuzumi spills the rest of his own volition: “Okay, so it wasn’t exactly a small thing. I might have thighfucked him in our coach’s office once. It might have been awesome.”

Nijimura frowns and turns to look at Mayuzumi. “Is this why you have a weird fixation with thighs? Because that’s kind of creepy,” he asks.

“I liked thighs _way_ before Akashi Seijuurou came along, alright,” Mayuzumi replies, a little snippily. “I probably liked thighs before Akashi was even _born_.”

They watch the documentary in silence for a solid ten minutes, neither of them taking any information about snakes whatsoever. “Akashi was different back then,” Mayuzumi says, voice brittle. “You don’t know how he treated people when he was at his worst. Akashi knows what he did and I know he’s sorry for it now, but some days I still let that fuck me up and those are days I can’t let it go. No matter what you say, I can’t do any better than that. Alright?”

Nijimura turns to look at him. “I won’t pretend to get it,” he says. “But it’s not any of my business to judge how you two wanna work things out, I guess.”

“I don’t really get it either,” Mayuzumi admits.

 

 

 

 6.

“For the record, I didn’t have a crush on you in middle school. I really didn’t,” Akashi says as he and Nijimura sit outside Mayuzumi’s academic campus, waiting for him to finish his last class of the day.

“Uh,” Nijimura replies. “Okay. Why bring it up, though?”

“Sometimes I think about the past,” Akashi answers. “I’ve been told to try and talk about it as much as I comfortably can. That might it might help me to do so.”

Nijimura reaches over and curls an arm around Akashi’s shoulder, pulling him close and pressing his face into Akashi’s hair. “Talk to me about Teikou as much as you want, then,” he says, and lets Akashi’s voice unfold memories for him.

 

 

 

7.

Mayuzumi’s an okay roommate. He cleans up thoroughly when he remembers to clean, although he sometimes forgets to replace empty rolls of toilet paper and at other times leaves stacks of books on the dinner table. At the very least, Mayuzumi does the bills diligently and doesn’t grow weed on the windowsill. On occasion, he sneaks up on Nijimura without meaning to and scares the shit out of him, but Nijimura’s started to get used to it, and hasn’t dropped a hot bowl of soup in weeks.

When Akashi gets accepted to the University of Tokyo, he officially rents out an apartment for himself instead of moving back into his family’s Tokyo household – “For my own wellbeing,” he’d said. Unofficially, he basically just moves in with Mayuzumi and Nijimura. His shoes take up half of the rack in the entryway. He has a bright red toothbrush kept neatly in the bathroom. His laundry gets mixed up with Nijimura’s and Mayuzumi’s (and the two of them had given up on keeping their clothes straight months ago).

One evening over dinner, Mayuzumi bursts out laughing and almost chokes on his rice. After Nijimura’s finished whacking him on the back and Akashi’s scrambled to get him a glass of water, Mayuzumi says, “It’s a literal ménage a trois now. Amazing.”

Akashi and Nijimura both level him unimpressed looks. Nijimura picks the glass up and hands it back to Akashi. “You don’t deserve this,” Nijimura informs him, but all three of them are smiling.

 

 

 

8.

Akashi talks more and more openly as the days go by. At first Mayuzumi and Nijimura can both tell that he forces it because he’d been told to, but eventually, Akashi settles into speaking comfortably about the sorts of ordinary things that he once would have internalized and never let out. Around Akashi’s second semester as a university student, his favorite topic is what major he aims to choose, fluctuating daily between different options. “I’m thinking about psychology,” he floats out one night as the three of them sit around the kitchen table. Akashi and Mayuzumi work on their respective class assignments; Nijimura reads the evening news.

“Well, I’m not sure somebody whose mental state over the years could fill an entire abnormal psych textbook should be allowed to take too many classes in it,” Mayuzumi says.

Akashi sets his pen down against the table. Nijimura glances up from his iPad to give Mayuzumi a Look, and Mayuzumi immediately gets it. “Too far?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Nijimura replies.

Mayuzumi hesitates for a moment, but then he sighs sharply. “It was uncalled for,” Mayuzumi says. “Maybe I’m just feeling nervous, like, what if you come back home and psychoanalyze my weird fetishes.”

There’s a pause, but then Akashi picks his pen back up and smiles faintly. “I don’t need a textbook to know that the extent to which you fetishize thighs is unusual and questionable,” Akashi replies.

Nijimura stares between the two of them and tries not to sigh openly in relief at how well that was resolved. “Alright, now kiss and make up,” Nijimura, pulling at Mayuzumi’s sleeve with his left hand and Akashi’s with his right.

Five minutes later, Nijimura has to stop them before they move into full-on making out on the table, but he just laughs and thinks to himself – they’ve come pretty far.

 

 

 

9.

This one time, Nijimura and Mayuzumi are on the subway when Mayuzumi suddenly says, “Hey. Doesn’t it look like some guy’s harassing that girl over there?”

Nijimura looks over – there’s a young man looming over a girl in a school uniform. His eyes wander over her body; she looks openly scared. “I’m gonna say something,” Nijimura tells Mayuzumi, and pushes through the crowd of people without waiting to hear Mayuzumi’s reply. He taps on the guy’s shoulder and uses his most effective glare. “Hey, do you want something from her? Because it looks like she doesn’t want anything from you,” he says.

The harasser glares right back. “None of your business,” he mutters, and turns around – Mayuzumi’s standing there and even Nijimura’s surprised at how quietly he snuck into the situation.

Mayuzumi smiles and stares blankly. It’s a look Nijimura is familiar with and knows to mean _if the eyes are the windows to the soul then I’m probably dead on the inside and therefore will feel nothing when I do terrible things to you_. “Sorry,” Mayuzumi says.

Stuck between Mayuzumi and Nijimura, the guy ends up skulking away. The girl smiles tremulously and thanks the both of them profusely before getting off at the next stop. Mayuzumi and Nijimura return to where they’d been standing before.

“That girl was so into you,” Mayuzumi says.

“Nah,” Nijimura replies reflexively.

Mayuzumi smirks. “She made eye contact, but stared away the next second. Then she tried to do a once-over subtly, but I think she got distracted somewhere around your biceps. Unsurprising – you are definitely the hot one in this relationship.”

“You’re hot,” Nijimura returns effortlessly. “But mostly when your mouth is closed.”

“Whoa, that was kinda sassy. I’ve rubbed off on you, clearly,” Mayuzumi says. He sounds proud. Nijimura is only a little mortified to realize that it’s true.  

 

 

 

10.

A picture of a lazy Sunday morning: Akashi’s cheek is pressed into Mayuzumi’s back and he’s snuggled in tight. Mayuzumi lies facing Nijimura, legs tangled together. All of them are awake, but none of them move and none of them speak. To break the silence to say something as obvious as _I love you both_ is unnecessary, superfluous. None of them are the doting type, anyway.

Akashi reaches over Mayuzumi’s waist to rest his hand on Nijimura’s arm, pulling him in closer. The moment will pass, but the memories – all of them – linger.

**Author's Note:**

> I KIND OF RUSHED THROUGH THIS to get it done while it's still 2014/5/9 somewhere in the world...! Anyway, I'm no expert on poly relationships, so by all means, let me know if there's anything problematic about this portrayal. I will appreciate it very much.
> 
> I also didn't want to make it too blatant in the fic itself, but I guess in my ideal KnB, after Akashi reverts to his original self, he goes and gets some counseling and actually tries to own up to all the shitty things he did as well as learn to better cope with his issues. I live in fear of that being swept away like "HAHA well that was a different Akashi" by the narrative, so there was a lot of wishful thinking in this, I know. Anyway, I hope it wasn't too obvious that this was a very, very self-indulgent fic, haha.


End file.
